


The Willingness to Lose

by websandwhiskers



Series: The Proper Care and Feeding of Indefinable Things [6]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Altered Mental States, Consent Issues, F/M, Healthy Relationship in Progress, The Author's Ideas on True Love May Be A Little Weird, The Unpacking of Baggage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-02
Updated: 2012-07-02
Packaged: 2017-11-09 01:47:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/websandwhiskers/pseuds/websandwhiskers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It happens, of course; it was bound to happen, after a certain period of time, their odds growing ever thinner.  Bruce doesn't accept this, so Natasha lets him not think about it, and thinks about it for him – contingency plans that would disgust and horrify him, but Natasha made him a promise.</p><p>She will not let him hurt her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Willingness to Lose

**Author's Note:**

> Hi people; so, I address consent issues here (yeah, it's in the tags, but I wibble. Deal with it) related to the Hulk as an altered mental state. I walk a fine line on this one, I think; there's some sexiness that happens, but it's curtailed to a degree that a very-aware-of-these-issues Natasha feels is what Bruce would want, followed by discussion after. It's still Bruce working in monosyllables and Natasha making the calls, though, so if that will be triggery - steer clear.
> 
> Unrelated: I'm on Tumblr. Come visit me! http://www.tumblr.com/blog/websandwhiskers

It happens, of course; it was bound to happen, after a certain period of time, their odds growing ever thinner. Bruce doesn't accept this, so Natasha lets him not think about it, and thinks about it for him – contingency plans that would disgust and horrify him, but Natasha made him a promise.

She will not let him hurt her. He won't see it that way, beforehand – she has hopes that maybe he'll be able to after the fact. That possibility hinges on his belief that she's planning no such thing, though, she knows that.

And she isn't planning it. She doesn't have to. The odds run out.

They're fooling around in the kitchen; cooking is a common interest, so they spend a lot of time there, and they've accumulated a truly indulgent collection of tools both obscure and arcane. She has him pressed back against the counter, her lips on the pulse point beneath his jaw, her hand cupping him through his pants, one of his legs between hers. 

The cabinet above his head is open. He tilts his head back, air escaping his lungs in a slow moan, throat bared. The back of his head bumps a glass. It teeters, bumps another glass. 

The third glass at the end of the row falls.

Natasha grabs for it. 

It hits the edge of her stone mortar and pestal, sitting out on the counter – hits with the sort of sheer perfection of chance that she's only ever seen Clint manipulate successfully. Not her. The glass shatters completely; she grabs it anyway. She is a creature of instinct.

Suddenly she has a handful of blood and pain, and Bruce – it's a double lightning strike, that falling glass, a perfect storm of factors. His already elevated pulse. The suddenness of her movement, the shock of the unexpected shattering sound. The smell of blood, tinged with adrenaline.

There's a strangled sound, low in his throat. 

Natasha opens her hand and plucks glass as quickly as she can, while he contorts and his clothing shreds. Plink, plink, plink – three pieces, dropped into the pestal with the rest. The cuts are so sharp and clean as to barely hurt, once the foreign object is removed, but they bleed impressively.

Green eyes stare down at her when she looks up. Not one stitch survived the process, and he's as aroused as he was a moment ago – Bruce says _the Other Guy_ , but in Natasha's mind, this is still Bruce. It's the only possible way this can work, for her, the only thought that lets her handle the fear.

“Hurt,” he rumbles.

“I'm alright,” Natasha says, licks a wide stripe up her palm to remove the excess blood, then holds it up. The cuts still ooze, but they're small, and beginning to close. “See?” 

He takes her small hand in one of his large ones and brings it toward his face; he bends, but he still pulls her to the tips of her toes.

Then he repeats the process, his tongue hot and rough as a cat's. It hurts, but . . . but she's as aroused as she was before all this, too. It twists together, fear and adrenaline and want, and – she can use that. She can definitely use that. 

She lets her thumb catch and stroke down his lip, when he pulls back. 

The next swipe of his tongue is to her neck. Then down between her breasts and up again, rucking her shirt up, and he goes to all fours on his knuckles, the drop of the weight of his upper body onto the floor making the whole house rock. Down her belly. Her pants rip down the fly and then the midseam, and he leaves them hanging off her. Up one thigh, then between, inhaling deeply. 

Still Bruce, Natasha chants to herself, this is still Bruce – but there is a part of her that knows he'd hate the thought of touching her like this, when he is like this. She is consenting, and he is the one acting, but – but. She knows better. 

“Bruce.”

He rumbles against her.

“ _Bruce._ ” 

He stops and looks up, eyes like the burn of August sun through the trees, and – yes. There's one answer. Yes, absolutely, she wants this. Not just for him, for her.

When she has his attention, she turns and walks away, kicking off the remains of her pants as she goes. He follows, as she'd known he would. 

Down to the basement, with its wide double doors and oversized stone steps, fitted out for just this purpose. Bruce would hate to wreck the kitchen. 

There are blankets and huge down-filled mattresses and no electricity, nothing to throw a spark, the light thin through the narrow subterranean windows with flowers growing outside in their wells. Natasha sprawls in a far corner; Bruce lays beside her, curled half over her, his nose snuffling into her hair immediately, his hand spanning the whole hollow, longing cage of her ribs.

“Bruce,” she says, turning her head into his chest, letting herself inhale too. He smells musky, more - but still of Bruce. “We need to talk about this first. When you're better at talking. I needed this to happen first before you'd even think of having that conversation, but really, I need to hear you say it's alright when you've got a few more higher brain functions online.” 

She doesn't expect a lot of comprehension of that, but he does pull back, just a bit, and touch her hair with reverent fingers. “Bright,” he says.

“Yes, bright,” she agrees, not a little ruefully. 

“Tiny,” he says, eyes traveling down her body, looking a bit concerned. 

“But creative,” Natasha counters, with a wry, regretful quirk of her lips. “Next time. For now – here.” She guides his own hand. 

***

Bruce wakes to a hand running up and down his spine and a soft humming in Russian.

Natasha is next to him, very naked. 

He nearly hulks out all over again.

“What -”

“Nothing,” she says. “Well. As close to nothing as seemed prudent. Please understand that all restraint shown was entirely for your benefit, not mine.”

“That was – what?” Bruce asks, his brain still filtering through dizzy, disjointed images, sounds, sensations – and what he's remembering doesn't seem overly nothing-like. “Just tell me I didn't force you to - anything. Please, please tell me that.” 

“I was more worried about you.” Natasha's lips quirk sideways – the same expression she made the first time he met her. _I'll persuade you._

“ _Why?_ ” he asks incredulously. 

“Because,” and she shimmies sideways and swings a leg up over his hips, crawls on top of him and rests her chin on her hands, folded over his heart. “You're the one under the influence. I don't want to take advantage. We need to discuss consent in altered states.”

“Consent in – no,” Bruce says. “No, we don't need to discuss that.”

She just stares at him.

“I won't let you do – do _that_ , for me, Jesus, Nat, just – just no.” 

“I want to,” she says flatly, and when he opens his mouth - “Bruce. I don't mean I want to _do that for you_. I mean _I want you_. In every shape you take. But I know you don't, and I'll respect that if you tell me to.”

“I -” He snaps his mouth shut. The revulsion at the idea is visceral and overwhelming – but very, very much tied in to the idea of force, and with that removed from the equation, what he's left with is . . . a moral blank. Something almost comical. He has no idea what to make of it.

“You know how much I operate on instinct,” Natasha is saying. “Every day. It's how I survive, what I do, what I am – I'm a bit more integrated than you, way more in control, but don't think for a moment that I don't have a beast in my belly, in the base of my skull, because I do. I am. Maybe I should call it a machine, really, because it's something that men made – but it doesn't feel like a machine. It feels like teeth and claws. And maybe it wants its match. Or maybe I do. Maybe it's like looking in a mirror, like reaching into a mirror, and maybe – maybe being touched is still strange, and always will be - not the act, but the intention – and, no maybe, _I do not fucking accept that_. I want you. I want that piece of you. It's alright if you hate it; I don't. I can't. I can't put mine away.” 

_It's not the same_ , Bruce wants to say, but the look in her eyes – really, he might as well stab her as say that. 

“If I hurt you -”

“I promised you, Bruce, that I would not let that happen.”

“How?” he finally asks.

Her smile goes wicked. She sits up on his stomach, and swings her legs around over his shoulders; one of her big toes plays with the shell of his ear. “Allow me to demonstrate a few possibilities; have I mentioned that I remember practicing gymnastics, before I remember settling on ballet?” 

“You've thought about this,” he responds, lost, so very lost, somewhere between wonder and accusation.

“Since the first time we met.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a quote out of an unpublished poem by, well, um, me. Can I quote me? I'm not giving me credit because that would kinda wreck the whole purpose of a pseud, wouldn't it? 
> 
> But the full line is "This is what they have taught her of love; it is the willingness to lose."
> 
> (And it's about rats. Yes, really.)


End file.
